When properly used, employee advocacy can be a powerful tool for enhancing your brand’s credibility, increasing engagement, and building awareness. However, like many other things in life, it also comes with some risks. These can range from a lackluster performance of your employee advocacy program to a severe social media brand crisis.

Therefore, before launching an employee advocacy program, it is essential to be aware of these risks and understand how to mitigate them. Join us in this article as we outline the common dangers associated with the program and provide guidance on how to avoid them.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Employee Advocacy Programs

The risks associated with employee advocacy programs are often the result of inevitable mistakes, such as:

Lack of Authenticity

Nowadays, social media users are seeking authentic content due to the overwhelming amount of polished and fake content on social media. A common mistake companies make is forcing their employees to share pre-approved corporate messages. Since this doesn't match the employee's social media voice, the content ends up feeling forced and rigid.

The impact of this rigid and forced content is that it causes employees to stop participating, resulting in a lower engagement level. Therefore, companies should allow employees to use their voice in the content they share, which feels more genuine and relatable. Authentic interactions can also lead to increased social media engagement. 

Lack of Sufficient Employee Training and Support

When employees join your advocacy program for the first time, they might feel lost, wondering what they should share and even fearing that they will share the wrong thing. That's why companies must provide their employees with clear guidelines, training sessions, and an easy-to-follow curation tool. Without these tools, employees may lack the empowerment to participate effectively. 

With a robust training program, you can equip employees with the necessary skills to effectively navigate various social media platforms and represent your brand authentically. A training program can also be one of the key factors that improves the participation level. 

Over-focusing on Incentives

Companies need to recognize and reward their staff for participating in the employee advocacy program. However, when this is done wrongly, it can become a challenge rather than a blessing for the program. This is because the whole program becomes a cash cow for the employees, and it becomes a transactional affair. Instead of engaging in employee advocacy because they believe in it, they start to do so to benefit from the perks. 

The disinterest of these employees will be evident in their posts, resulting in low engagement among their audience. That is why companies need to create a balance between intrinsic motivation and incentives. They should make their employees see the other benefits of participating in the program, such as thought leader recognition and opportunities for personal branding on Instagram and other platforms. These opportunities can result in the advocacy culture becoming more sustainable.

Wrong Content Strategy

One of the key factors influencing the success of your employee advocacy program is the selection of content. Nowadays, social media users are increasingly averse to promotional content because they have a vast amount of content to choose from. Therefore, if you are only providing your employee advocacy team with promotional content, the entire program will begin to resemble a traditional advertisement.

You should provide your employees with a diverse mix of content types such as industry news, personal insights, and company updates. This will ensure that their content remains fresh and relevant to their network. When you encourage the use of different content types, the entire employee advocacy program will feel engaging rather than overly commercialized. 

No Leadership Support

When managers and executives fail to actively promote the program, employees may feel there is no value in participating. Therefore, there is no end to the company leadership's responsibility to lead by example from the front. They should share content, engage in various discussions, and demonstrate why advocacy is key to the organization's overall strategy. 

Risks Associated With Employee Advocacy

The risks associated with brand advocacy come from three primary sources. These are: 

• Privacy and security concerns
• Protecting the brand identity
• Adhering to industry concerns.

How to Mitigate Employee Advocacy Risks

There are several steps you can take to mitigate the risks associated with an employee advocacy program. These include:

Having a Social Media Policy

A social media policy is a document that outlines what employees can and cannot do when creating content for your business. Ensure that you emphasize the rules that should be followed as a way of regular compliance. For instance, is it necessary to maintain the confidentiality of the company's clients? Ensure that the document is concise, clear, and straightforward.

Employee Training

Employee advocacy risks can also arise from employee ignorance. For instance, you may find that an employee shared sensitive information or failed to secure their social media accounts. Ensure that you train employees on how to protect their accounts from hackers by using measures such as two-factor authentication. 

You should also train them not to share sensitive information. Before they share work-related images, you can ask them to get company approval. If your company operates in a sector such as finance or pharmaceuticals, ensure that your staff understands the regulations that could result in legal repercussions. 

Provide Brand Guidelines

To protect your brand identity, ensure that your employees are provided with brand and asset guidelines, which will ensure consistency between the company’s content and that of the employees. However, when doing that, avoid killing their authenticity and instead encourage them to remain genuine and original.

To achieve the best of both worlds (brand identity and authentic content), you can provide pre-approved content for the employee, rather than posting it directly on the internet to use as inspiration. They can then use their unique tone while avoiding violating any guidelines or regulations.

Major Obstacles in Employee Advocacy Programs

While employee advocacy offers numerous benefits, you are also likely to encounter significant obstacles that may impact performance. These include:

Employees Not Interested

There are many employees out there who consider social media to be their haven and do not want to share company-related information. A report by The Marketing Advisory Network indicates that approximately 30% of employees are reluctant to share business-related content. The report adds that another 15% don’t want to create content that overwhelms their networks while another 15% said they didn't want to look like company robots. 

To address this issue, you should enable employees to personalize the content according to their needs. Doing so will allow them to convey the message in their voice. Additionally, you can add the relevant third-party content for the employees to share. This way, the employees don't have to feel like they are sharing company-related content too often. 

They will instead be seen as a source of interesting and valuable information about their area of expertise and industry. Finally, give employees the freedom to choose what to post and when to post, as long as it's within the company policy. 

Social Media-Averse Employees

In this era, company advocacy cannot be complete without a social media presence. However, it is undeniable that there are employees who are not interested in social media. While this may not be a problem for all employees, having more advocates can be beneficial for your campaigns. 

A good idea would be to let the employees know that they are not only doing it for their organizations, but they will also gain something. Employee training can also help employees feel more confident in their abilities. 

Lack of the Necessary Knowledge

At times, you will have employees who are willing to share but lack the knowledge on how to do so. They fail to understand what makes a good piece of content they can share, what to write in their posts, and which social media platforms to use for sharing. 

You can solve this challenge by providing the employees with the right content to share and the correct captions. You can also show them the types of posts they should like and share, as well as the people to follow and those to engage with. Ensure you also receive feedback from your employees. 

Finding High-Quality Content

After enrolling employees in your advocacy program, you will need to share third-party content in addition to your own. Otherwise, if the employees are only talking about your brand, it will be hard for you to gain followers. You are likely to find it hard to relaunch high-quality content. 

To deal with this challenge, you can sign up for industry publications and visit the websites of those publications, and follow the social media pages of the thought leaders in your industry. 

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that the employee advocacy program can increase your brand awareness. However, it is a journey that is filled with mistakes, risks, and roadblocks. The good news is that by identifying these challenges, you can prepare for them and take the necessary steps to overcome them. Therefore, follow our detailed guide on mitigating the risks associated with poorly managed employee advocacy programs.